27 Jul Special Commentary: Thank You, Joe! And Let’s Go, Kamala!
A few weeks ago, in the season finale podcast for “Women’s Media Center Live with Robin Morgan,” I said that although we were going on hiatus until September, in case of unusual news I would return with Special Commentary. Well! This past week or so certainly has given us unusual, even historic, news. So here is that commentary.
At first, I was furious at Joe Biden—for bombing in the debate, for letting himself visibly embody aging and fragility, then for resisting the mounting, finally insurmountable pressures to step aside. I also (understandably!) blamed the toxic ageism raining down on him from the press, the media in general, the politicos, the right and the left and practically everybody else.
At age 83 myself, it must be admitted that I identified with him. And worse: I blamed him. And me. For simply being old.
Then there was Covid. He had said jokingly that only heavenly intervention would make him step aside. And when Covid sent him to his beach house to self-isolate, I thought a lot about him: the old man and the sea. I thought about how he was tired and old and sick and hurt, so deeply hurt. And alone, and trying to work it through. And I wept for him. All he had wanted was to finish the goddamn job. The guy who had built his reputation, skills, and credits for years – decades – in the Senate and then as Obama’s vice president just wanted to finish the job in that second term.
And then I realized something with a shock. President Joe Biden had finished the job. Because in only a single term he had already accomplished what was probably the most impressive presidency in my lifetime.
I won’t retread all of those achievements in their staggering historicity, but here literally are just a few.
He managed, despite a hostile Congress, to pass legislative achievements on climate emergency, gun control, manufacturing, and infrastructure. He delivered on the most aggressive environmental justice agenda in US history. He protected more lands and waters in his first year than any President since John F. Kennedy, and cut our emissions to half by 2030 and to net-zero by 2050. Through executive action, he signed legislation to develop clean energy at home, accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, and reduce pollution that endangers overburdened communities. He kept his promise to nominate and swear in the first Black woman to the United States Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. He kept his promise to deliver on the child tax credit, which cut child poverty in half. He kept his promise to legitimize the Dreamers. He took on Big Pharma and managed to cap the cost of insulin medication for diabetes at 35 dollars a month–down 70 percent. He changed the course of the pandemic and began to rebuild our economy. He created 15 million new jobs and turned inflation around so that more people are now employed than at any time in the country’s history. He broadly expanded benefits and services to our veterans. He built up our infrastructure, our bridges and tunnels and highways, which also meant more jobs. He passed the first meaningful gun violence reduction in 30 years. He passed debt release for middle and working class families, debt relief for students, and grew the number of people with health insurance. He maintained a delicate balance between defending Ukraine and Europe yet kept us out of World War III. He blocked the Knownothings when they rose to rampage against the courts, the Constitution, Congress and the election itself. He rebuilt our foreign alliances and strengthened and expanded NATO. Through it all, although Roman Catholic himself, he was a strong defender of a woman’s right to choose to end an unwanted pregnancy, and he did whatever he could to aid women in our rage and distress when the Dobbs decision came down from the Supreme Court.
Oh, it goes on, two terms’ worth. His accomplishments and legislation rival those of LBJ and FDR. Biden was likely the most transformative president in our lifetimes.
That’s more than enough for two terms. Don’t you think?
Now, Joe, you face the “what’s next” question? I mean after the election and her inauguration (YESSSSSSS!!!), and after people finally realize what a great president you were. What next? There’s always the Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter path, where good works small and large take over your life and where you counsel on ways to make peace, forge treaties, build houses, and run fair and free elections (god knows you’ve earned the Elder label!).
Maybe you haven’t had time in all the flurry to think through the fact that you’ve already HAD that second term, triumphantly achieved, all you could have achieved in those additional years – plus the six months coming up, of course—and now it’s only the Nobel Peace Prize lap.
George Washington refused a third term despite urging from some of the Founders and lots of the public clamoring even to crown him king of the United States. You did something the same and different from Washington, though you both were furiously at war with your own ambition. After a lifetime of public service, there you were, an old man, listening to the waves break against the shore in the middle of the night at a beach house, sick, frail, alone, you wrestled down that ambition and chose to stand up straight against Trump’s fascistic rise to power.
Thank you, Joe.
You saved us to become a more perfect Union, a Republic with the democratic rule of law.
You saved us for Kamala Devi Harris—the first woman, the first Black woman, the first Asian American woman to run for the presidency on a major party ticket.
You saved us for the explosive release of energy that followed Biden’s announcement across the country; 50,000 volunteers for Kamala calling in within the first day; $100 million dollars donated within 24 hours, a record; 45,000 Black women leaders with Harris on a phone call. Another phone call with 20,000 Black male leaders. Youth and student groups activated and on fire all across the nation.
Why? Where did they come from?
They’ve been here all along. A lot of them built this country.
And they know. They know that Kamela set a new record for the most tie-breaking votes cast by a vice president in the history of the Senate. They know that her vote helped pass the Inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan, which provided Covid relief funding, including stimulus payments. They know that she broke another tie with her vote confirming Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.
But they don’t know the half of it. They don’t know that even as a fierce prosecutor, as a fiercer attorney general of California, Kamala:
- Started a “first-of-its-kind” racial bias training for police officers and expanded her prison diversion program throughout the state;
- Made the California Department of Justice the first statewide agency to require body cameras;
- Launched a platform that allows the public to track reported killings by police officers;
- Pushed back against California’s “three strikes” law, which triggered mandatory prison time after a third felony, by instructing her office not to prosecute unless the offense was a serious or violent crime;
- Resisted massive calls to seek the death penalty, after a case in which a police officer was shot and killed by a gang member—a move angering not only the police union but Democratic legislators, including then Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Sounds like my kind of woman, that Kamala.
So let’s go, Sister!
And again, from the heart: Thank you, Joe.